In color management color spaces are discriminated as device dependent (DD) and device independent (DI) color spaces. Device dependent color spaces are generally the RGB and xvYCC color spaces (proposed by Sony™ in 2005 for HDMI 1.3). Device dependent color signals result in a reproduced color that depends on the display device. Device independent color spaces are typically CIE XYZ and CIE L*a*b*. Device independent color signals correspond directly to the reproduced color. The link between DD and DI color signals for a given display device or for a given pictorial content is defined by a profile.
When connecting a HDMI source to a HDMI sink, source and sink are described by profiles. One part of a profile is the color gamut. The color gamut describes all colors that are reproducible by a given HDMI sink display or that are present in a given content. The color gamut can be described by a Gamut Boundary Description (GBD). When a given image content has a gamut larger or different from the gamut of the HDMI sink, the colors lying outside the aimed gamut have to be clipped or moved accordingly. This procedure is called Gamut Mapping (GM). The gamut of the content is circumscribed by the gamut of the HDMI source.